Your 2026 RMD Deadline: What to Do Before December 31

If you have money in a traditional IRA or a 401(k) and you are 73 or older, the IRS requires you to withdraw a minimum amount every year. For 2026, that deadline is Thursday, December 31. Custodians get busy in December, so it is worth acting by early in the month. Here is what you need to know.

Which deadline applies to you

Anyone born in 1954 turns 73 in 2027, so their first RMD isn’t due until April 1, 2028. If you were born in 1960 or later, RMDs start at 75. See the full schedule by birth year on our RMD table page.

Should you delay your first RMD to April 1?

The April 1 extension sounds generous, but there is a catch: your second RMD is still due December 31 of that same year. If you push your 2026 RMD into 2027, you will report two RMDs as income in 2027. For many retirees that means a higher tax bracket, more of their Social Security benefits becoming taxable, or higher Medicare premiums two years later.

Example: you turn 73 in 2026 with a $600,000 IRA on December 31, 2025. Your 2026 RMD is $600,000 ÷ 26.5 = $22,642. If you wait until March 2027, you will also owe your 2027 RMD by December 31, 2027 — another $23,000 or more — for upward of $45,000 of IRA income in one year. Delaying usually only makes sense if your 2026 income is unusually high.

How to calculate your 2026 RMD

Divide each account’s balance on December 31, 2025 by the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for the age you reach in 2026. At 75 the divisor is 24.6, so a $400,000 IRA requires $16,260. The RMD calculator does the math, and our per-age pages show the RMD on balances from $100,000 to $3 million.

• Traditional IRAs (including SEP and SIMPLE IRAs): add up the RMDs and take the total from any one or more IRAs.
• 403(b) accounts: RMDs can likewise be totaled and taken from any of your 403(b)s.
• 401(k)s and other employer plans: each plan must pay out its own RMD.
• Roth IRAs, and Roth 401(k)s since 2024: no RMDs during your lifetime.

Inherited IRAs: annual RMDs are back

If you inherited an IRA after 2019 and you aren’t a spouse or other “eligible designated beneficiary,” you generally have to empty the account within 10 years. And if the original owner had already started RMDs, you must also take an annual RMD in years one through nine. The IRS waived penalties for missed annual RMDs from 2021 through 2024 while it finalized the rules; starting with 2025, they are required. Check with your custodian if you aren’t sure which rule applies.

If you miss the deadline

The penalty is an excise tax of 25% of the amount you should have withdrawn but didn’t. It drops to 10% if you take the missed distribution and file Form 5329 within the correction window — generally by the end of the second year after the miss. The IRS can waive the penalty entirely if the shortfall was due to reasonable error and you are fixing it; you request the waiver with a statement attached to Form 5329.

Smart ways to take your RMD

• Give it to charity: from age 70½ you can make a qualified charitable distribution (QCD) directly from an IRA to a charity — more than $100,000 a year per person, indexed to inflation. It counts toward your RMD but isn’t taxable income.
• Use it to pay your taxes: tax withheld from an IRA distribution is treated as if it were paid evenly through the year, so a large December RMD with extra withholding can cover an estimated-tax shortfall.
• Take it in kind: you can move shares from your IRA to a taxable account instead of selling, if you’d rather stay invested. The value on the transfer date counts as income.
• Reinvest what you don’t need: you can’t put an RMD back into an IRA, but you can invest it in a taxable account — or a Roth IRA if you have earned income.